Invoking its precedents against the use of race in legislative districting, the Supreme Court today invalidated one Congressional district in North Carolina and three in Texas as the product of unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.

The Administration is now trying to defend them all, including some plainly indefensible racial gerrymanders.

After more than two and a half hours of argument over whether new Congressional districts in Texas and North Carolina were impermissible racial gerrymanders, the question remaining was whether Justice Sandra Day O'Connor would blink.

Justice Antonin Scalia interrupted Javier Aguilar, a special assistant attorney general from Texas, who presented the day's first argument in an appeal from a decision that struck down three Texas Congressional districts as racial gerrymanders.

If race was a predominant factor in the construction of the districts, the Court ruled, they were unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.

Noting that the Court had struck down districting plans that excluded blacks, she said, "It is unsettling how closely the North Carolina plan resembles the most egregious racial gerrymanders of the past."

In her majority opinion, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor thundered against "political apartheid," and suggested that "the North Carolina plan resembles the most egregious racial gerrymanders of the past."

A special three-judge Federal District Court in Houston invalidated three Texas Congressional districts with black or Hispanic majorities, finding them to be the product of unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.

Plaintiffs Al Vera, Edward Blum, Polly Orcutt, Ken Powers, Barbara Thomas, and Ed Chen challenged 24 of the state's 30 congressional districts as racial gerrymanders.

In another redistricting case today, the court unanimously overturned the finding by a Federal District Court in Montgomery, Ala., that seven state legislative districts, all with white majorities, were the products of racial gerrymanders.